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Dead Rising: Watchtower

Let’s pretend for a minute: It’s early September and you’re shopping at your local super-complex mall. It’s a standard mall, with dozens of stores accessible to you. Everything seems normal until a lady opens the door to let her dog inside when suddenly almost everyone around you is suddenly a zombie: a brain hungry, blood-soaked zombie. That’s basically what happens to our hero, Frank West in the game: Dead Rising. While this isn’t a Horror Gaming segment, we’re actually going to be talking about the upcoming Crackle film, based on the hit video game series: Dead Rising. Allow me to give a bit of a back story – the game’s story centers on the character Frank West – a photojournalist who ends up trapped inside the Willamette Parkview shopping mall, found in the made up town found in Colorado. The twist of this particular story is that the whole mall is crawling with zombies, which means Frank must defend himself from zombie attacks; all while trying to rescue survivors, deal with crazed psychopaths, and ultimately, stay alive while attempting to uncover the truth behind where the zombies came from.. If it wasn’t obvious enough, the player plays as Frank as he explores the mall, [in it’s entirety] wearing all sorts of wacky costumes, and using just about any available object as a weapon against the zombies! [anything from guns from the gun shop, to canoe paddles from the boating goods store] Also, because Frank is a photojournalist, the player can choose to complete several main [and tons ofoptional] missions to earn Prestige Points which can be used to gain special abilities. However, my favorite part of the game is the fact that it’s designed to have several endings, which are chosen depending on the decisions that the player makes through out playing the game. It really adds to the replay ability factor!

But enough of the game, like I said at the beginning of this post; we’re here to talk about Dead Rising:Watchtower, the movie based on the game series, which is coming to Crackle on March 27th of this year. Now, although this isn’texactly new news to the horror fans of the world, we actually got the trailer for this film two days ago. and honestly, it looks..unique: Which might be a good or bad thing. but, being as I’m slow, and I’ve been working [both in the stock roomand the new job!] I’m only getting around to seeing the trailer today! [I’m usually caught up with these kinds of things, sheesh!] This movie version of Dead Rising takes place during a large scale zombie outbreak. But when a mandatory government vaccine [known as “Zombrex”, which is taken directly from the game]fails to stop the infection from spreading, four survivors have to avoid becoming infected while also trying to track down the root cause of the epidemic: with all signs pointing to a government conspiracies! Politics, public paranoia, and media coverage are also said to play an important role in the movie’s main storyline, which is somewhat promising, right?

Of course, like any movie; it’s also important to cast the right people for the roles they’re filling. think about people like Bruce Campbell as Ash, or Robert Englund as Freddy – These people embody these roles so fucking perfectly. It’s hard to imagine any one else! [cough* ANOES remake cough*] This is where I start to go from Watchtower feeling like a “unique” film to: “oh God, this is gonna be strange..” Look at the following picture of Frank West, remember; he’s the main character, below: if you had to choose an actor to play him for the movie, who would you choose?

Mel Gibson? Ethan Hawke? Someone else? The correct answer for who we aregetting though as Frank West is none other than Rob Riggle – y’know, that guy from the 21 Jump Street remake! I’m not entirely sure I know how I feel about this part of the casting, but it’s something that I’ll have to see for myself. He’s a funny actor, and I’m sure he can play a funny character: like Frank is supposed to be; I just imagine two separate types of humor between Frank and Riggle.

At the end of the day though, I really can’t say whether or not I’m excited for this movie: I’m a fan of the first two games [never played the third, sadly] but as a movie; I’m not entirely sure if it’ll translate well. As I said before, it’s coming to the free streaming service Crackle by the end of March, so maybe I’ll watch it [at least ‘try’] – just because I didn’t have to pay for it. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a decent zombie flick, and I’m just cynical. Check out the trailer for Dead Rising: Watchtower below and let me know in the comments if you‘ll be watching this movie, or if it’s a senseless cash-in for a quick buck.